Leading First Amendment Scholars and Litigators Call on FCC to End Unlawful ‘Jawboning’ and Censorship Campaign

WASHINGTON — On Friday, a broad and multipartisan coalition of civil-society groups, leading First Amendment and media policy scholars and litigators called on FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to stop using the “public interest” standard and “news distortion” rules as political weapons to silence viewpoints that President Donald Trump doesn’t like.

In a letter sent to Carr, they detailed his many questionable attempts to censor and control the media for displeasing the president, calling the chairman’s threats “unlawful jawboning” in violation of the First Amendment. They urged the chairman to withdraw all pending threats against broadcasters and other media outlets. 

Since stepping into the chairman’s role in January 2025, Carr has recklessly sought to curry favor with the White House by abusing the agency’s authority and threatening any media outlet that angers an increasingly paranoid president. This includes a relentless drumbeat of threats made against public broadcasters like NPR and PBS, late-night television hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert, national networks like ABC, CBS and NBC, and the local affiliates that carry their programming. In many instances, Carr’s actions were triggered by a Trump Truth Social rant about some imagined slight the president suffered at the hands of the media.

“The Communications Act explicitly denies the Commission any ‘power of censorship’ or power to ‘interfere with the right of free speech,’” reads the letter led by TechFreedom, Free Press, Public Knowledge and others, and signed by more than 80 individuals and organizations, including scholars, civil society groups and litigators.

“Your vague conception of ‘fake news,’ ‘news distortion’ and the ‘public interest’ … violates the First Amendment because it ‘fails to provide a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what is prohibited,’ and ‘is so standardless that it authorizes or encourages seriously discriminatory enforcement,’” they write to Carr, citing extensive legal analysis and precedent.

In September 2025, Free Press and Public Citizen led a separate letter signed by dozens of pro-democracy organizations calling on Carr to resign for violating his oath to “defend and support the Constitution of the United States.”

Free Press General Counsel and Vice President of Policy Matt Wood said:

“Chairman Carr mistakenly believes he has power to shake down media companies, censor broadcasters and punish newsrooms that won’t twist their coverage to placate an erratic and image-obsessed president. He likes to pretend he’s the Minister of Truth when it comes to ‘correcting’ news coverage about this administration. In reality, the law is crystal clear: The FCC is explicitly prohibited from dictating the editorial decisions of national news networks, late-night television programs, local newscasts or any other media outlet. 

“The FCC chairman’s threats are grounded in neither reality nor law, but in the false belief that President Trump’s wishes and whims are synonymous with the public interest. Carr has lost the trust of people in the United States as he repeatedly threatens First Amendment freedoms. He’s violating the Constitution and his oath of office to uphold it. 

“Carr has shown himself completely unfit to safeguard a free press. He must end his censorship campaign to prevent any further damage to free speech, press freedom and the rule of law. And his disastrous tenure at the agency should come to a swift end.”

###